In case readers haven’t been following this particular drama, here’s the background. The Dodd-Frank reform law, passed in response to the financial crisis, included language establishing a consumer protection agency that would shield Americans from deceptive lending through mortgages, credit cards and the like. (Those practices, you may recall, played a big factor in almost destroying the housing market, not to mention the economy.)
The Dodd-Frank law is not nearly strong enough. It stops well short of fixing the problems that caused the meltdown, including deeply inadequate regulatory oversight. But the CFPB concept seemed promising.

Republicans, of course, consider this agency a grave threat to the financial system. By which they mean it’s a threat to their donors. An editorial we published in July explained that “banks—big campaign contributors—don’t want robust consumer protection because complex and obscure products are lucrative.” If there’s a more charitable — but still reality-based — explanation for Republican opposition to the agency, I’d love to hear it.

Initially, the president wanted Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard law professor who’d pioneered the idea for the new agency, to actually lead it. But Republicans weren’t going to let that happen. Blocking Ms. Warren was the next best thing to scrapping the whole agency, which cannot exercise its full regulatory powers without a director.

So the ever-obliging Mr. Obama passed over Ms. Warren, and in July tapped Mr. Cordray, the former attorney general of Ohio and current chief of enforcement at the agency. This was another pointless attempt by the administration to encourage Republican compromise. That attempt failed, of course. Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama responded charmingly to the news of Mr. Cordray’s nomination. He said it was “dead on arrival.”

Mr. Cordray has all the right credentials, but that doesn’t matter. Today, 53 senators voted for Mr. Cordray, and 45 Republicans voted against ending debate on his nomination. In the Senate, you need 60 people to vote for a vote. And with that, another exciting episode of the CFPB drama has come to a close.